IN MY OPIN­ION

The let­ter by M.P. McCril­lis (Bil­let­ing a Cheap and In­ad­e­quate Sub­sti­tute for Proper Lan­guage In­struc­tion, Feb. 23) im­plies that Cana­dian tax dol­lars in­di­rectly sup­port in­ter­na­tional stu­dents study­ing at Cape Bre­ton Uni­ver­sity. How­ever, in an area with a shrink­ing pop­u­la­tion such as Cape Bre­ton, in­ter­na­tional stu­dents (whose tu­ition is not sub­si­dized by our gov­ern­ments as is done for Cana­dian cit­i­zens) help keep post-secondary ed­u­ca­tion ac­ces­si­ble for Cape Bre­ton­ers.

In the past I taught English to in­ter­na­tional stu­dents at other post-secondary in­sti­tu­tions. I also com­pleted uni­ver­sity stud­ies de­liv­ered in my sec­ond lan­guage.

I rec­og­nize the chal­lenges in both teach­ing and learn­ing in the po­lit­i­cally charged and ( for some) well-paid the­atre of academe. In­ter­na­tional stu­dents’ English lan­guage pro­fi­ciency is not a chal­lenge unique to CBU, but the sit­u­a­tion takes on greater im­por­tance be­cause of CBU’s re­la­tion­ship to its sur­round­ing com­mu­nity.

I wish CBU the best in its ef­forts to de­velop, de­liver, or dis­cover lan­guage pro­grams in all pos­si­ble for­mats for in­ter­na­tional stu­dents, and I hope sup­port is not lim­ited to the new In­ter­na­tional Cen­tre for English Aca­demic Prepa­ra­tion.

The pres­ence of in­ter­na­tional stu­dents in Cape Bre­ton en­riches our com­mu­nity mul­ti­cul­tur­ally, con­trib­utes to our area eco­nom­i­cally, and per­mits more uni­ver­sity pro­grams to main­tain en­rol­ment lev­els nec­es­sary for con­tin­ued ac­ces­si­bil­ity for Cape Bre­ton­ers.

CBU and the en­tire com­mu­nity owe in­ter­na­tional stu­dents sup­port in re­turn. In a global vil­lage there are no “ for­eign” stu­dents. Con­nie McPher­son Syd­ney

In­san­ity may be new de­fence

I am shocked and ap­palled at the MLA ex­pense de­ba­cle. Glace Bay MLA Dave Wil­son lives here and knows a lot of peo­ple can’t af­ford to pay rent and buy gro­ceries (some don’t even have a bed) but he felt it was all right to buy pa­tio fur­ni­ture with our money.

Rich­mond MLA Michel Sam­son wanted us to pay for In­ter­net charges for his apart­ment in Hal­i­fax. I must check to see if the pub­lic wants to pay for mine. Do they re­al­ize there are peo­ple who have to live on $441 for a month?

I have a dig­i­tal cam­era re­ceived as a gift but it didn’t cost $2,000 and I doubt Premier Dar­rell Dex­ter will get bet­ter pho­tos. The for­mer Yar­mouth MLA paid $8,000 for a gen­er­a­tor while some peo­ple freeze all win­ter be­cause they can’t af­ford heat­ing bills.

North­side MLA Ce­cil Clarke says MLAs wouldn’t know­ingly bilk tax­pay­ers. Does this mean they didn’t know what they were do­ing? Are they not guilty by rea­son of in­san­ity? Shirley Trem­blay Syd­ney